VeriSign Jacks Up .com, .net Prices To the Max

se7en writes "VeriSign is jacking up prices for the .com and .net domains for the second year running, increasing both by the maximum 7% allowed under its exclusive contract with ICANN. 'Assuming that VeriSign continues the 7 percent rise each year (which seems reasonable given the company's history), registrars will be looking at $9.00 for .com domains by the time the current contract ends in 2012 — a 50 percent increase in six years.' Registrars have no choice but to pony up, and chances are they'll pass the pain on to customers."

And?

[TubeSteak]

Is there any reason Verisign wouldn't jack up prices by the max allowed in their contract?

Re:And?

[Mr. Slippery]

Is there any reason Verisign wouldn't jack up prices by the max allowed in their contract?

In a sane world, behaving like a bunch of asshats by trying to squeeze us for every penny they can, would mean that their contract wouldn't be renewed by ICANN; so there would be such an incentive. In a sane world.

Of course, we do not live in a sane world.

Re:And?

[BrookHarty]

Well if you don't like them, go register your domain somewhere else!

Oh wait.

Value of the once almighty dollar.

[lancejjj]

increasing both by the maximum 7% allowed under its exclusive contract with ICANN

But that 7% increase is in U.S. dollars.

Given the recent drop of the value of the dollar, that means that much of the rest of the world whose currency isn't based on the US dollar will see a 1% price drop, instead of a 8% price drop.

Re:And?

[mlts]

Hate to be a devil's advocate here, and but Verisign in some ways has to, because publically traded companies like VRSN have to show their shareholders they are earning as much money as the traffic can bear, and if not, why not.

If they don't, shareholders will become former shareholders, and/or try to find reasons to sue. This is true about any company, if any company cuts prices on a flagship product, they need to have a good reason (such as a new model, competition is forcing their hand, or perhaps going for higher volume sales) to explain why to shareholders why they did so and why they chose to get less income.

Verisign isn't perfect, but the real culprits are ICANN, and the short range thinking of stockholders in the US who only care about what is coming next quarter, rather than being with a company long term. I'd rather invest in a company who has multiple subsequent quarterly charges against their income for R&D than one which always makes the numbers (even barely) each quarter, but really has no real direction to expand.

I dont understand

[JimboFBX]

I dont understand- is this entry a joke? This is about as ground-breaking as "a local McDonald's increases $1 menu to $1.05 menu!" In other news, inflation was 8% last year!

Re:Can't say I mind...

[garett_spencley]

The problem is that "lay-people" consider .com to be "it". And if you register "my-indie-band.org" some squatter WILL register "my-indie-band.com" ... and when your fans go to look you up they'll type in the ".com" before the ".org".

Is it bullshit ? Yeah, absolutely. Is there much we can do about it ? Not really.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[cheater512]

Unlikely. A couple of extra bucks wont do anything.

Re:And?

[garett_spencley]

I pay $9.20 USD right now / .com domain. I think that $9 is what VERISIGN gets. Not what people actually pay.

Granted, I agree. If you can't afford $10 - $15 / YEAR for your domain then you're not getting much out of it. But then again, not all .com's are for-profit. Some people don't like that and think that .com should ONLY be for commercial entities, and I agree that's absolutely what it was designed for initially. Only problem is if you don't register a .com for your domain then a squatter will. And, unfortunately, unless your traffic consists mostly of tech-savvy users then the majority of your type-in traffic will hit the .com first.

Obsolete

[racyrefinedraj]

Why do we have TLDs anymore, anyway? Why can't I just register http://yourname/ [yourname] ? Since their original intent is both broken (not all .coms are commercial etc) and obsolete (people just google for things anyway), why don't we just say that a domain is a string of alphanumeric characters terminated by a /

Re:The USA: Land of Competition

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The United States is really big on competition.

Correction - the united states TALKS really big on competition.

The only real competition that the government cares about is who can shove the most 'campaign funds' into each politician's pockets.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[Kozz]

HAHAHAHAHA... oh, you were serious??

I think changing policies on domain tasting would do a hell of a lot more.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[zippthorne]

If you have a band, even an indie band, and you're selling stuff or live performances, wouldn't that classify as "commercial" enough for a .com domain?

Re:Can't say I mind...

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, that's debatable. Dotcom has stopped meaning "commercial website" long before the dotcom boom. If you want a .com for your cat page, that's fine. Second, the .net TLD is no alternative either, because that's another Verisign domain which just got more expensive.

The whole idea of limiting TLDs to a few category-like names (outside of CCTLDs) is the primary economic problem with the domain name system. DNS is not a directory and can't be one. Domain names are administrative boundaries, not content descriptors. There should be thousands of TLDs, so that there is enough variation that you have to pay attention to the "suffix" of a domain. Then people wouldn't so easily think that .com is a proper website and the rest is for the amateurs. There should be thousands of TLDs, so that there can be actual competition between registries in terms of infrastructure quality, service and price. There should be thousands of TLDs, so that you can get a domain from a registry in a country of your choice without making people think of your domain as targeted to the people of that country. There should be thousands of TLDs, so that companies no longer feel compelled to own their name under all TLDs.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a shorter version: "Allow Bayesian filtering."

Re:Prices need to go up much further

[Loconut1389]

apparently you don't run a bunch of non-profit sites on your own dime or with a limited budget. Thanks for your support.

Re:And?

[number11]

If you can't afford $10 - $15 / YEAR for your domain then you're not getting much out of it.

Well, you're not getting much money out of it.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[Cairnarvon]

For legitimate users the domain is the least expensive part of running a website. For squatters, who generally have thousands upon thousands of domains all pointing to one or a handful of servers, it's not.
Or it wouldn't be if not for domain kiting.

Re:And?

[Nullav]

They could raise the price to $200/year and it still wouldn't make a difference because of domain tasting. (Really, who actually gets buyer's remorse over a domain name?)

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[mpe]

A 7% increase is nothing for spammers.

Especially if they are also scammers who don't pay their bills in the first place.